I am pretty dang happy to be able to say that as of the 25th of January, I officially became "Dr Bec". This would obviously not have been even remotely possible without my fantastic support network - my advisors, the lab, my collaborators, my students and volunteers, my family, and a whole lot of 80s rock star buff-footed antechinus - thank you, from the bottom of my overjoyed, geeky heart.

Thanks lil guys!

I've been lucky enough to score a postdoc with Robbie, so I get to stick around in the Wilson lab for another year! For my postdoc, I'm building a mathematical model to predict prey escape success against predators in different kinds of habitats. The end goal of this model is to predict how well different native marsupials (such as northern quolls and brown bandicoots) can escape from mammalian predators (like cats and dingoes) in different kinds of habitats, using data my lab mates are collecting on Groote Eylandt. This will allow us to predict what kinds of habitats are best for native mammals, which will hopefully have some conservation implications. I also function as the Wilson lab's go-to stats person, and am running a bunch of the statistics for our human health project.

Tempe, clockwise from top left – wall of awesome at King’s Coffee (as everyone knows coffee is a key element of research); cycling on a sunny afternoon; nap time with Mylo the gangsta cat; sunsets and palm trees on the way home

At the moment, I'm back in at Arizona State University in Tempe, working with A/Prof Ted Pavlic to get the generalised version of our predator-prey model finished and written up. Things are progressing very nicely, and as always, it’s been an amazing experience and I've learned a lot!

I also attended a Gordon Research Conference on Predator-Prey Interactions in Ventura, California at the start of the month. This conference was absolutely amazing - I learned so many new things, got a ton of new ideas, and met some awesome people doing freakin' awesome research. Though I can't share any pictures (GRCs focus on presenting research that's right at the cutting edge of the field, so most of it is unpublished), I would absolutely recommend these conferences, as they are fantastic for networking and gaining a broader insight into your own field.

Whale watching in the Santa Barbara channel

Last up, a couple of papers just came out in early view! The second paper from my PhD, titled "Ecological context and the probability of mistakes underlie speed choice" came out recently in Functional Ecology. In it, we show that antechinus choose both how fast and where they move based on their chance of making mistakes - when looking for food and escaping from predators. You can read a plain language summary of the paper here.

An asian house gecko (image courtesy of Wikimedia commons), and a buff-footed antechinus on a (non-experimental) branch

I'm absolutely psyched to be sticking around and continuing my research, and I'm looking forward to the year ahead - which is already off to a great start. All images by Rebecca Wheatley unless otherwise credited.

To start the year out right, all the Wilson Lab members came together to do a 'summer' clean out of our work spaces. It was hilarious to see the diversity in what equipment, systems and paraphernalia we had collected over the years due to our lab's eclectic array of research programs: from soccer balls and goals, modified clothes lines for camera calibration, metal race tracks for sprinting crabs and froglets, fish swim ways, pingpong balls for human performance, bird cages, 9 year old beer, castle whiskey stands and the list goes on and on.......

So many fish tanks for Mosquito fish and Gobby research - all has come to an end....until next time.

With music blaring (although hard to hear with so many people), a designated job mat to allow Skye to delegate cleaning jobs, catch ups on everyone's research and plans for the weekend we somehow got the lab, field storage unit and student office cleaned up and organised within 2 hrs. Even the microwave and fridges got a clean - Thanks Nat and Gwen!

What a welcome Ellie and Hannah got to the Wilson lab - both ladies just started their Honours on Monday (Bio's and research projects to be posted soon) - and have had a true introduction to what they can expect for their upcoming year.

I travelled to Hobart for the Australasian Evolution Society conference at the start of December 2017 with other UQ PhD candidates Iva Popovic, Julian Beaman and Joshua Thia. It was the first non-student conference I have attended and it was great experience learning about what other labs around the country are working on.

I presented my first PhD chapters work on environmental thermal variability and how it plays a role in the evolution of thermal acclimation capacity (how plastic an animal is) and thermal performance curve shape (how wide an animal’s thermal tolerance is).

Thermal acclimation theory suggests that when daily thermal fluctuations are smaller than seasonal thermal variations animals will have narrow thermal performance curves and the capacity to acclimate to seasonal conditions. When daily thermal fluctuations are equal to or larger than seasonal variations however, animals are expected to evolve wide thermal performance curves and have no capacity to acclimate. What makes Coco’s Frillgoby exciting is that they live in rock-pool environments where daily thermal variation is equal to seasonal variation but changes in daily thermal means and ranges shift predictably with season, allowing Coco’s Frillgoby to have wide thermal performance curves and the capacity to acclimate.

Joshua Thia also works on Coco’s Frillgoby and presented his work on population connectivity along Australia’s east coast. Iva Popovic presented her work on the transcriptome of an invasive mussel species that is spreading around the world and Julian Beaman presented his work on the allometric scaling relationship of mass and metabolic rate in cockroaches, and tested if metabolic rate is heritable.

Iva Popovic won best student talk at the conference and Julian Beaman won best poster! Well done you guys and go UQ!!

Wineglass bay in Freycinet National Park.

Julian Beaman (left) and Iva Popovic (right) the AES student poster and presentation winners! So happy and proud for them!

After the conference, the four of us Queenslanders explored Hobart where of course we couldn’t miss the vagina wall at MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) and we travelled to Freycinet National Park - a beautiful mountainous and coastal region a few hours north of Hobart. We loved it! We will be back Tasmania!!

So much happened for our lab’s field-work stints for the last half of 2017, with multiple co-current teams collecting data - it was busy times on Groote.

Sunrise at Marble

Out trapping - beautiful!

Skye & Kaylah were out-and-about all over the island, setting up funnels baited with yummy dog food to collect hair from passer-by bandicoots & quolls. Doing the hard yards (walking over 600km) & long days the ladies left with plenty of hairy success …… after a few mishaps of course. Tom put his hand up again to re-visit Groote for October, to help out Kaylah in deploying more hair traps…. freeing up Skye to move on to her many mountains of work & adventure.

Hair-trapping at Marble

Bush lights up

Fire 1, Hair trap 0

Nat and her minions, Miranda & Cleme, were busy at it – catching quolls, collecting more performance data in the Ranger lab and, setting up perve-cameras to watch how quolls dig & devour yummy sardine nuggets. With a mighty full schedule, Nat finished up on Groote a little stiff but smiling with oodles of video to analyse about how quolls eat dinner.

Miranda & Nat's 4pm Logistics meeting

Quoll performance once again

Quoll babies growing strong

Chop & Gwen returned to the rock for another round of data collection from the people living in Angurugu & Umbakumba. A couple of weeks into the trip, Ami (ex-quoller) joined the human team to help out with the cognitive & motor skill testing – a very welcomed addition. Also a plus, our Angurugu testing room was upgraded to the recently renovated ALC field office, woohoo! Gwen made an exit after 5 weeks, leaving the Chop-Ami duo to push through to November winning – well done!

Gwen out front the new Angurugu testing room

Chop setting up in Angurugu

Welcoming Ami to the Human team

Robbie & Frank von Hippel (Eco-toxicologist from Arizona) also made an appearance on Groote in October – bringing smarts, support & laughs to the Groote teams. Thanks guys :)

Frank, Robbie & Ami talking all things eco-toxic

The team's way in & out of Groote

A big welcome to MEF, the new car member to the Groote research team. With a bunch of teams needing wheels to collect data, KOB was working overtime & was in high demand. So, Skye & Kaylah had the pleasure of escorting MEF to Darwin where it was then barged over to Groote……of course there was a little sight-seeing a long the way.

Fun fishing times out with good mates - the weekends can be pretty awesome up here

Chop, after numerous morning let-downs, bought his own Weetbix-specific bowl – a key contributor to how Chop starts the day. The resident Alyangula Flat’s bower bird decorated his bachelor pad with a new white & green theme.

The prized Weetbix-specific bowl - check out his smiley satisfaction

Alyangula Flat's resident bachelor pad

Now mid-November, the Wilsonite Grooters are all happy to be back in Briz-vegas after a fruitful 2017 year to begin devouring the field data & head into the festive season. Top year team!

If you’re a gazelle wandering the plains of Africa then what’s gonna save your tasty, hairy arse when a cheetah comes flying at you from the long grass. Assuming that you have some warning – and you see it before it crunches into you – then the most common answer will be speed. Performance biologists are fixated with sprint speed and often use it interchangeably with escape performance. So many biologists will suggest it is speed – and speed alone - that will determine escape from capture.

Image from Pinterest.com

But I disagree. Escaping (or deathing) will always be decided by a combination of speed, acceleration and agility. After all – almost every predator has a faster top speed than their prey!! There has to be something else to escape than just speed.

I first learned this lesson as a 20 year old back in 1992. Of all the places to discover the importance of escape performance – it was outside a nightclub. So, get comfortable, put on some slippers and pour yourself a goblet of brandy, and let me tell you all about my discoveries…….

For me, it was the usual Saturday night when I was a young buck. My friends and I headed out to the local RSL club (Retired Military Services Club) until about midnight. Having got ourselves suitably joyful on $2 spirits (it was cheap then), we walked down the road to the only nightclub around at the time. I lived in Mona Vale on the northern beaches of Sydney – and the Rocklilly nightclub was the only action around, unless you wanted to catch the bus to Manly (1/2 hr) or the city (1 hr). Apathy meant that was a rarity.

Three hours of fun, loud music, bad dancing and a little bit of YMCA, and it was closing time at the Rocklilly. We were all very intoxicated, but not quite ready to let go of the night. A crowd gathered out on the street. Maybe I was trying to chat up a girl that I had no chance of getting to know better OR maybe I was just trying to act the clown to an audience (any audience) but I heard a scream and then shouting. I turned to see one of my best mates (Chris*) on all fours looking in real trouble. He was about 10 m from me.